News & Views

Although I spend a lot of my time thinking and writing about good food, I'm pretty inconsistent when it comes to what I actually do. When my (then) three-year-old boy went on a calcium strike, for example, I caved in after about four minutes and made him chocolate milk. When my daughter pouted instead of getting dressed for school, I offered a piece of candy as motivation to speed things up. When I picked the kids up from school, I'd bring lollipops and crackers. When I had a rough day at work, I'd reward myself with a piece of ice cream pie.

I'm writing about these things in the past tense because I'm committed to change. Summer's coming, and my strategy of doling out treats in order to keep people happy needs to change. It will change.

I’m a firm believer in the power of the marketplace, that every dollar we spend on food is a binary vote: either FOR an agriculture system that makes our bodies, our communities, and our environment healthier, or AGAINST it.

Last week, the Codex Alimentarius Committee on Food Labeling finished its meeting. Codex Alimentarius is a joint commission of two United Nations agencies, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). The committee meeting was in preparation for a full commission meeting that started on Friday. And one of their agenda items was to discuss a recommendation for adopting worldwide labeling standards for foods made from genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Imagine that you are from a place and a time where your life, your very existence, is inextricably linked to the land. Imagine that you know the environment around you so intimately that you can spot the swish of a lizard's tail in the undergrowth twenty feet off. That you can differentiate an edible plant from its poisonous cousin from touch alone. That by tasting the soil, you can divine what plants will and will not flourish. That you can disappear into the forest or jungle and emerge 60 minutes later with dinner for your family. That even though your family grows food on a farm, you often venture off with friends to gather what is offered in the wild. That some of your earliest memories are following your mother through the jungle as she bends and stoops to gather greens. That you remember hearing laughter as she and the other women banter back and forth between patches of wild edibles.

A few alarming statistics:

I was excited to be included at this year's W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food & Community Networking Meeting, held from April 27 - 29 in Chandler, Arizona. Even before I got there, I knew I was going to be able to meet the people behind lots of amazing food-related projects and websites, hear about their progress, and connect on important issues. Advance materials from the Kellogg Foundation informed me that:

Food & Community is based on the precept that all segments of a community must work together to surround children with healthy food and routine physical activity in the places they live, work, and play.

Alright, I’ll admit that the title of this article is a shameless attempt to capture your attention. There really isn’t a reason, as far as I can tell, why animal lovers should eat meat – that is, no reason why eating meat is ethically superior or preferable to abstaining and going vegetarian.

Today is the deadline for entries for the “Eat Lunch with Your Kids” contest. Thanks to all of you who have sent such terrific stories about your school lunch with your sons and daughters. If you haven't sent us your entry, please do so today -- or you’ll miss your chance to win a one-year supply of Organic Valley milk and much more!

Although I’m not allowed participate in the contest, I did commit to eating lunch at school with my twin eight-year-olds. And taking pictures and writing about it. So two weeks ago, I packed their lunches (as I usually do) and planned to meet them at 12:00 sharp in the school cafeteria -- only they would be eating Annie's organic, whole-wheat macaroni and cheese with peas; Gala apples; Minneola tangerines; local carrots; and organic lemonade, and I would be eating:

About 40 years ago, on April Fool’s Day, I secretly dumped all the white sugar out of my mother’s sugar bowl and filled it with salt. When she poured her first cup of coffee that morning, and added her spoonful of “sugar,” she tasted, for the first time, her daughter’s love of practical jokes.

I wanted to play a joke on all of you today, too, to commemorate that one date every year when we are encouraged to lighten up and not take everything so seriously. But I don’t have legal access to your sugar bowls -- and even if I did, what are the chances that you, my fellow “eat-real-food” aficionados, would have them filled with white, processed sugar?

So my April Fool’s joke for you is a collection of five food-related stories that sound preposterous enough to be fake.

But only one is. The rest, believe it or not, are true -- to the best of my knowledge.

See if you can figure out which is which. And no cheating!

School lunches have come under some serious scrutiny as of late, and, it seems, not a moment too soon. As Americans try to find explanations for our growing obesity epidemic, the food available to children during the school day is being fingered as one of myriad culprits. I was horrified to read about the low cost, low quality, highly processed junk consistently fed to American children, day in and day out, under the National School Lunch Program. I was fired up and inspired after watching Jamie Oliver’s impassioned TED prize acceptance speech and call to arms to try to recapture our lost food culture by teaching children about cooking and eating good, fresh food.